


The Seat of Talents

by Xparrot



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alien Technology, Community: sga_genficathon, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Science Fiction, Season 3, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-13
Updated: 2008-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:57:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team gets caught in a trade deal that will have an unexpected cost for one of their four.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seat of Talents

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 1st [SGA Gen Ficathon](http://community.livejournal.com/sga_genficathon/), for the theme "Friendship," prompt "Self-sacrifice." Set late season 3, before "Sunday." Thanks to Gnine and Naye for the beta.

The Sedes Facultatium was solid black wrought iron, a looming artist's interpretation of a giant vulture skeleton. It squatted in an empty, whitewashed chamber crudely carved into the Challidans' stone tunnels.

Dux Yerrith's servants closed the vulture's skeletal wings over John's chest in a loose but solid cage. The metal seat under him was hard and ridged, reclining at just the wrong angle. It hadn't looked this uncomfortable when Ronon had sat in it. The chamber was neither too hot nor too cold, but the iron was chill when he closed his fingers around the bars.

"Be easy, Dux Colonel," Yerrith reassured. "As I promised, the extraction procedure isn't harmful."

Binding and legally accurate, by certain definitions of 'harm.' But he'd brought his team here; he'd agreed on this mission—between Ronon, Teyla, and Rodney, they'd have pretty much anything the Challidans could ask for, that's what he'd told Elizabeth, all confidence. He'd accepted the deal. His own damn fault.

Rodney could pilot the jumper back. It wouldn't be a problem. "Just do it," John said.

 

* * *

Dumb as it was, John's first thought had been of the Dungeons & Dragons game Mitch had dragged him into, the first month of his tour in Afghanistan.

D&D was cheaper than a video game and didn't need batteries, just a pouch of dice you could carry in your pocket and a few folded sheets of paper. They played a few times a week, four or five soldiers gathered around a folding table rolling multi-sided dice, pretending to be dwarves and half-elves, slaying orcs and dragons and collecting gold and experience points. When you leveled up you could expand your skill set, write down new abilities, bear-riding or wall-scaling or lock-picking.

It became a running joke for a while, for the bunch of them to match their listed talents to those accumulated in real life—skill in prostitute-banging (+4 in your saving throw against STDs); skill in scorpion-whispering (roll a d20 to see how many were camped out in your boots). And some nights in Kabul, John would wish learning Farsi were merely a matter of penciling it on a list.

So when Lieutenant Mitsotakis's team came back from M7D-414 talking about skill exchanges, John's first mental image was going through the gate and finding the Challidans waiting with character record sheets in hand, ready to barter Wraith-kill experience points for Level 6 Ancient Tech Expertise. He almost shared the joke with Rodney after the briefing, but decided some thoughts were too geeky even for him.

What garnered the most attention wasn't Mitsotakis's new hand-to-hand ability, or the formerly aqua-phobic Dr. Aubin taking to swimming and diving like a cormorant, or even Dr. Wong's unexpected knowledge of obscure Ancient scripts; but Corporal Flemming's work in the commissary. He'd served chef-shifts before with minimal competency; now, suddenly, he was _in demand_. "Small wonder," Rodney said around a mouthful of kind-of-cheese puffs, the formerly much maligned kind-of-milk of M3X-822 now elevated to first choice of every diner. "How'd he _make_ these? Why couldn't he have invented them two years ago?"

"They'd like us back to trade more," Mitsotakis reported, to Teyla's surprise. The people of Challidas, she explained, were exceptionally picky about who they chose to deal with, and had never traded with the Athosians in her lifetime.

John would have just as soon let it be. All four of Mitsotakis's team had returned to Atlantis with throbbing migraines to supplement their reports of alien technology. The Challidans had sworn that it was safe, claimed they used it all the time—"And you _believed_ them?" John demanded incredulously.

But the headaches were gone by the next day, brain scans showed no damage, and when Corporal Flemming starting whipping up pseudo-wheat hotcakes even tastier than the kind-of-cheese puffs, Elizabeth okayed a second expedition. John volunteered his team; Ronon was having way too much fun testing Mitsotakis's new martial art, and Rodney was itching for a look at the transfer tech, eminently confident that he could figure it out—better than an anthropologist, a geologist, and a meteorologist masquerading as an Air Force lieutenant, anyway.

 

* * *

Within a minute of arriving on M7D-414, their jumper was met mid-air by two long, narrow crafts with a familiar enough silhouette that John's hands twitched on the controls.

"Are those Wraith darts?" Teyla asked, low and calm.

Rodney shook his head, bringing up the HUD. "By the mass, they're metal, not organic. Man-made. Though they might've been modeled on Wraith-tech, I wouldn't be surprised." He leaned back in his seat, uncaring, and defied Ronon's doubtful look with, "What? It's not like that means they're working with the Wraith. They could've cannibalized a crashed ship."

"They're not Wraith," John supplied. "Wraith fly better than that." The ships wobbled along their trajectories, like their pilots could barely keep them in the air. Recalling his own experiences in a dart's blind cockpit, John sympathized.

Their creepy escort brought them to a clearing some hundred klicks from the gate. On the ground, Challidas was a gloomy world, dreary, stunted trees cowering under a sky of slate clouds. The three who came to greet them were boldly compensating for the lack of color: two tall, bald figures in indigo and orange robes, flanking a woman in a fitted scarlet jerkin over lime green silk. Dux Yerrith was middle-aged by her lead-gray hair and the lines around her mouth, sincerely welcoming in a way that didn't quite set John's teeth on edge. "It's been some time since we've had the opportunity to trade with a people entirely unknown to us, Dux Colonel. Vas Lieutenant attributed a bewildering variety of skills to your people."

"Yeah, we're pretty handy," John said easily. "Though the lieutenant might've exceeded his credit limit—what'd he promise you, exactly?" Because in any galaxy, the laws of nature apply; you can't get something for nothing, and that went double in Pegasus.

"One skill," Yerrith said, "for our archives, and we'll give eight in return, four more besides those already received, of your choosing," and she smiled like this was a bargain, buy one, get one free. "As for what you offer, we'll accept many varieties. While combat skills are highly prized, for obvious reasons, and skills with technology as well, we're always looking to expand our bank of cultural skills. Really, anything original—even what Vas Emmagan can offer may be acceptable; we haven't traded with the Athosians for some time. A new form of bantos stick combat might be satisfactory." At that, Teyla looked inclined to offer a practical exhibition of her particular stick-fighting skills, but Yerrith only kept smiling. "And if this arrangement proves equitable, we'd be most interested in further negotiations."

"Sure, we've got fighting, science, whatever you want," Rodney said.

"I don't know," John said. "Fighting the Wraith—we're kind of in need of all our skilled people at the moment, don't have any to spare."

"Put your mind at ease, Dux Colonel. For one to give a skill takes no more than a couple hours, and then the four of you can return to your world. In this trade, your people lose nothing. Any skill you offer us, we'll willingly return—a skill now unique to one of your people you can have two or three receive, if you wish."

"Sounds more than fair." Rodney was all but rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "Now when can we see how this exchange works?"

For a cynic, McKay could be almost impressively naive. Too good to be true, John thought, and wondered how much junk Rodney might've once bought off of late night infomercials.

 

* * *

The Challidans lived underground, in wide halls lined with richly embroidered tapestries. John caught Rodney eying the high ceilings, wondered if the wariness in his expression was fear of a cave-in or wincing at the violently violet mosaics.

Fifteen minutes of winding corridors brought them to a hexagonal cast-iron portal, black metal painted over in dizzying spirals of blue and chartreuse. "So, Dux Colonel," Yerrith asked, "what skills do you want for your people?"

John wondered what was the polite way to put, 'How you don't get eaten by the Wraith.'

Ronon said, "Tiloctigit knife-play," without hesitation, like he'd been waiting for it.

Dux Yerrith nodded. "Vas Dex names a fine skill indeed. Would the knife-play be appropriate, Dux Colonel? We don't have the skills of a Venerable Adept, but a minor master once gave to our archive."

Ronon shrugged. "I barely rate as a novice, now."

He was holding one of his knives. John could just see the silver flash of the blade between his fingers, a short, wickedly curved dagger he'd noticed on Ronon before. Now Ronon was running his thumb over the edge, concealed within his big hand. Powerful grip, capable fingers—John had seen Ronon kill Wraith with those hands, knew that seven years as a Runner had taught Ronon more than John would probably be able to learn in his lifetime.

There was something wanting in Ronon's face now, bloodthirst, or something else.

Yerrith was looking at John, as if waiting for his approval. "Whatever he wants," John said.

The woman lifted one hand. One of the servants in blue and orange swept silently to her side, ducked to listen to her whispered command, then disappeared behind a crimson hanging curtain. A few minutes later he—she? The loose robes and lack of hair made gender a guessing game, and the silver and gold cosmetics didn't help—returned with a brass tray, holding a small, blue-white crystal.

"Ancient tech?" John murmured to Rodney.

"Maybe," McKay returned, drawing out the word indecisively. He had his detector tucked under his crossed arms, was surreptitiously examining the readings on the little screen.

Yerrith stuck her hand in a little alcove by the portal, made a complicated twisting motion. The heavy iron door rotated to the side with the creaking, grinding noise of a massive mechanism, opening into the small gray chamber with the iron throne.

The Sedes Facultatium didn't look like any Ancient device John was familiar with. More like a medieval torture instrument, its maw spread open and waiting, the crude black bars curving out like a splayed ribcage. The wrought iron frame arched up another eight or ten feet above even Ronon's head, then twisted down again into a single four-fingered claw suspended over the cage.

Teyla glanced at John, shook her head minutely; she'd never seen its like, either. Rodney, eying it, muttered under his breath, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition," and John choked on an involuntary chuckle and glared at McKay for it.

When Ronon stepped forward, John moved faster, putting himself between his teammate and the black throne. "So what does this thing do, exactly?"

Yerrith blinked at him. "I assure you, Dux Colonel, the procedures of reception and extraction are identical for Ducis and Vasis—I've received four skills myself. There's no danger; the Sedes Facultatium will do your warrior no injury."

Teyla met John's eyes, brow furrowed but undecided. Rodney made a little hurrying gesture, a bloodhound's gleam in his eyes, the full-steam-ahead fascination of a scientist hot on the trail. "This is what we came here for, right?"

In the end, it was Ronon's choice; in the end, John could no more have stopped Ronon than he could have dropkicked the moon out of orbit. "All right," John said, stepped out of Ronon's way and let Ronon find a seat on the twisted metal frame. The Sedes was easily large enough to accommodate him; it might've been built for a man a foot taller.

Yerrith had her servants close the metal cage, had them place the blue crystal in the four-pronged fixture over Ronon's head. They stepped back, and Ronon closed his eyes and rested his head between the spread-wing talons of the chair's back. The crystal flashed.

And that was all. "It is done, Dux Colonel," Yerrith said, and gestured for the servants to open the bars and release Ronon.

"That's it?" Rodney complained, not so _sotto voce_.

"Ronon?" John asked cautiously.

Ronon flexed his big hands, stood from the Sedes. "Don't feel any different."

"It'll take some time to set in mind and muscles," Yerrith said. "A few days before it's completely assimilated, and exercise will be required to perfect it, as the muscles will be unused to the particular activities, but Vas Dex has the Tiloctigit knife-play skill."

"Right," John said; _wrong_ was what he thought. All wrong, all kinds of wrong, but by then it was too late to get out, even if he didn't know it yet.

 

* * *

(Later, after her servants had hauled his team away, he argued with Yerrith. "This isn't how we work," he tried to explain. "When my people talk about 'cultural exchange', this isn't what we mean. Lieutenant Mitsotakis misunderstood, he wouldn't have made the deal if he'd known."

Only maybe he would have anyway. John didn't know. Ronon might've made it—still was willing to, but they'd have to wait, weeks or months or more, until he could sit on the Sedes again. "Reception of a new skill interferes with the extraction process," Yerrith had explained. "Nor does reception take if it's repeated too quickly. Traditionally we wait five or ten years between uses of the Sedes, and devote ourselves to mastering those few skills we receive."

It didn't matter; John wasn't going to let the Challidans keep Ronon that long; sure as hell wasn't going to let Ronon go through with it anyway, willing or not.

The hell of it was, Yerrith didn't even see the problem. Didn't understand why John had tried to attack her, why she'd had to confiscate his weapons and post a guard on him. To hear her talk, it had all been aboveboard, perfectly rational. She sounded confused when she spoke to him. "It's not uncommon for Vasis to be unreasonably possessive, as if their skills are only their own and not their people's. Choose one of them, and we'll handle the extraction. It may take a few times to extract a complete skill, but as soon as it's finished we'll return your Vas to you. We'll be done by nightfall. And you may bring them back later to receive other skills, if you wish."

She didn't get it when he tried to punch her. Though she blocked fast enough—he should have checked beforehand what those four skills she'd received were. It might've saved him some effort, when he'd tried to pull his Beretta before, and she'd disarmed him so fast she damn near broke his fingers.

"You're not touching any of them," John told her. "You're not putting any of my team in that damn Sedes.")

 

* * *

Rodney had wanted a turn, after Ronon. Actually, he said, "Can we see that again?" and, when John looked at him askance, explained, "It works too fast. I need to take more readings, if I'm going to have a chance of figuring out what the thing really does." He looked at Dux Yerrith. "Crystals are reusable, yes? I didn't notice any change in the matrixes during the process, it still looks intact. So give the Tick-tock knifery to me, too, then."

"Excuse us a second," John said, and let Teyla make polite explanations while he grabbed Rodney's arm and hauled him out of the chamber into the hall. "Are you serious about this?"

"I told you, I have to gather more data."

"But knife-fighting? Not science or math or whatever?"

"Abstruse neurophysiological equipment aside, I doubt they have many science skills that I couldn't learn for myself in about as much time," Rodney said. "And imprinting the same skill on a different brain will tell me more about what specific changes it's making. Besides," and he looked weirdly eager, more than the thirst for knowledge John was used to, "knife-fighting, it's not like I'd ever learn that otherwise."

"You're that excited to have Ancient tech zap your brain? _Again_?"

Rodney tapped the detector. "The charge is low-level, and it doesn't resemble the typical signatures of Ancient tech. Though it's hard to believe anything could rewire neurophysiology just like _that_ ," and he snapped his fingers.

"It only took that Ascension machine a second to rewrite your DNA," John hissed back.

Rodney blinked at him. "Is that what's bugging you?"

"No, not that," John said, because it wasn't. He couldn't explain it himself, exactly, just how wrongly this rubbed him. An enzyme that could up your speed and strength like an ultra-steroid, that he got. Even that a machine could change your genes to give you superpowers—and then kill you if you didn't advance all the way on to angelhood—it was out of a comic book, sure, but it made sense, living the kind of sci-fi life they had on Atlantis.

But that you could copy and paste an ability, that you could learn a skill as easily as if you were writing it down on a piece of paper—a minute to learn, and another minute to master; there was something _wrong_ about that. He thought about learning to fly—natural talent, he'd heard that all along; but it wasn't like he'd known what he was doing the first time he'd sat in the cockpit. Flying had taken him years to learn, over a decade of training and simulators and practice, different teachers and different crafts. He'd screwed up, and he'd hashed out mistakes with other pilots, picked up tips and figured out other tricks by himself. You couldn't just give all that away, couldn't possibly pass on every lesson that mattered with a single flash of a crystal.

It was Rodney's choice, though, and John got it. Ronon, who had plenty of talent with a knife but no chance to master it, needed not education, but a boost in skills he'd already learned. Rodney, though, Rodney had been born a genius, was used to complexities such as esoteric physics principles coming to him as easy as breathing. John had long understood that Rodney's reluctance to practice on the firing range, or learn self-defense, was because he wasn't naturally gifted at such things; he got frustrated with himself, not used to struggling to learn.

So when Yerrith looked at him inquiringly, John nodded. "Give it to him."

Yerrith hesitated, some of the genuineness of her smile fading to disappointment, though the expression itself stayed fixed as a used car salesman's. "So is Vas Emmagan's skill to be offered, then?"

Teyla's own smile had too many teeth, for all her tone was courteous as ever. "If that would be satisfactory, Dux Yerrith. I can offer what bantos stick fighting I have now; perhaps in some years hence I will be able to trade you a full mastery."

Yerrith's eyebrows rose in mild surprise. "Well, of course not _you_ , Vas Emmagan, but whoever of your people receive the skill, perhaps."

After this long in Pegasus, John could _feel_ the other shoe dropping, like a hobnailed boot thudding on the base of his spine. "What do you mean, not her?"

"Few who offer a skill ever manage to relearn it," Yerrith said. "It's rare for anyone even to bother trying. And no one can receive back a skill they themselves offered. Those paths in the mind are burned by the extraction process, such that they can never be walked again."

She smiled at John. "But no need to fear, Dux Colonel—as I promised, whatever skill we  
extract, we'll be able to give to whoever else of your people you choose. It's a wonderful trade, that you lose nothing, and we all gain."

"Yeah," John said, hand dropping to his sidearm, "wonderful," and thought about checking his watch, so that on the mission report he could note precisely when everything went to hell.

 

* * *

Eventually John was shut away in a little room, cramped, but amply furnished with a brilliantly embroidered divan and a gilt-trimmed table. He paced a circuit around the chamber, feeling for drafts indicating passageways behind the painted paneling and elaborate tapestries, but there were only stone walls. The single door was thick wood.

He kicked over the table, was about to try to snap off one of the heavy legs for a club when the door opened once more. "I want to see my people again," John said, before Yerrith got a word out. "Now."

Maybe Yerrith thought it would make him more cooperative. She knew better than to try to argue with him anymore, at least. In turn he knew better than to try to attack her again. Even if she didn't have two of her servants in blue and orange prowling behind her, the woman could hold her own. The woman and her stolen skills.

The guards let John down the dungeon stairs and didn't follow him. The granite walls were carved and painted in blinding cyan and magenta checkerboards. That had to be against the Geneva Convention. Behind the iron bars, Ronon looked sick from it, greenly nauseous. He was holding a wad of bandage to his head, but there wasn't much blood anymore. His glare was probably due to being taken down by only two men, and both of them smaller than him, if unnaturally skilled; Ronon could hold grudges for some time.

"John," Teyla said, coming up to the bars. "Have they decided?"

John wasn't in the mood for her diplomacy. "No, I haven't decided. I'm not going to decide, I don't care what kind of damn bargain these people think we agreed to. None of you are going to sit in that thing."

"According to the entirely too friendly guard we were talking to earlier," Rodney said, "if we resist the extraction, or try to give them some ability they don't want, we stand to get any number of things erased. Not to mention, give one skill and the associated ones tend to get screwed up or lost in the doing—offer snowboarding and you'll never ski or surf again, either. And they'll keep trying until they get a clean print of a skill they consider valuable."

"It's better for one of us to volunteer, then," Teyla said quietly. "John, select me. The Dux already agreed to accept my bantos fighting."

John tried to imagine Teyla in the gym, as clumsy with her polished sticks as he had been the first time he'd picked them up, stumbling and accidentally whacking herself on the knuckles—couldn't do it; his mind whited out on the thought. He'd been practicing for two years; in another decade he might be approaching Teyla's level. With luck and more work than he was really likely to put into it. He shook his head. "Then who would train me?"

"Something else, then," Teyla said. "I have knowledge of many dozens of cultures; they might consider that a skill."

"No," Ronon said. "Me. I know plenty of different ways to fight, and I just got one more. I can lose one or two."

"And what if they don't want the one or two, and end up going through five or six or ten?" Rodney snapped. "What'll we do with you then? Besides, you're exempt for now. They're going to do this soon."

Elizabeth would be sending another team to fetch them if they didn't report within another fourteen hours. Yerrith was aware of the time limit, from Mitsotakis's initial contact. They got too close to the wire, and she probably would just flip a coin, rather than be denied her promised trade.

"I can stay," Ronon said. "Wait here until I'm ready."

"Hm," Rodney considered. "That might work—buy us time to throw together a rescue, spring you before they put you in the Sedes."

"I do not think it would be wise," Teyla said. "If they fear Ronon will not hold to his word, they might try to extract anyway, despite the risk."

"And melt his brain," Rodney sighed, poking at the detector they'd allowed him to keep, going over the one scan he'd gotten of the throne in action. "During extraction, the Sedes probably increases the synaptic activity of whatever skill they're trying to encode, so the pattern can be clearly recorded on the crystal, and that's what burns out the neural pathways. If reception involves rewriting pathways, those new neural connections will be tenuous for a while, until they're adapted into the brain's normal structure. Mess with that process, damage the neurons, and everything gets poached. Like a computer crashes if you try to open too many programs at once, blue-screen of—um, yeah. It'd be bad."

"Great," John said. "And how does knowing this help us get out of here?"

"It doesn't, but if I'm going to be tapped of all my scientific knowledge, I'd at least like to understand the procedure that turns me into a vegetable."

"That's not going to happen," John told him.

"Oh, yes, and how are you going to stop it? If they decide to start sucking out my science, who knows what they'll consider worth trading for? With my luck they'll throw away everything until they reach, I don't know, string theory, or Einsteinian relativity, and that's not even _applicable_ any more—"

"Rodney!"

"Rodney, we will not let that happen," Teyla said firmly. "As you often remind us, Atlantis is in need of your scientific skills. More than my bantos fighting, certainly—"

Rodney's eyes went wide at that. "Bullshit," he said, "that's—"

"True," Teyla countered.

"But—but—" Rodney babbled, "—if they do take science from me, you could always bring Zelenka in to receive it, I guess, so it wouldn't be a total lost—"

"You volunteering, McKay?" Ronon asked.

"Is anyone listening to me?" John demanded. "This isn't happening. We're going to stop talking about it now, because it's not happening to any of you."

"Easy for you to say," Rodney grumbled. "Look what side of the bars you're on, Sheppard. Privilege of leadership—you're the wrong caste to get involuntarily mind-wiped." He snorted. "Don't know what they'd take anyway. You think hair-styling would count as a satisfactory skill?"

If the stairs leading down to the dungeon didn't creak, John wouldn't have heard Yerrith's approach. Abstractedly he wondered if walking silently were another of her four skills. "Have you decided yet, Dux Colonel?"

John looked at his team behind bars, Ronon grim and bruised, Teyla straight and calm and ready, Rodney hunched over on the wooden bench, staring down at his detector and not looking up.

"Yeah," John said, turning away from his team, "I've decided. One skill, right?"

Dux Yerrith nodded.

"Okay, then." He took a breath. "When we came in, your people sent aircraft to meet us. They were based on Wraith darts, right?"

"Yes..."

"Darts aren't easy to fly," John said, recalling the crafts' uneven flight paths. "I'm guessing you found a way to extract the skills from the Wraith pilots?"

"We did," Yerrith said, "though imperfectly. And people do not...receive Wraith skills well."

"Yeah, I can imagine." He didn't have to look behind him, to know Ronon would be standing, to hear Teyla say his name as Rodney spluttered protests.

He could see the avarice gleaming in Dux Yerrith's smile. _Act now, just five easy payments of nineteen ninety-five..._ "Well, you've got a pilot right here. A human pilot. I know how to fly a Wraith dart, and anything else you put me in. I'll sit in your damn Sedes and give you your skill, and then you let my team out and let us all go home. So, we have a deal?"

 

* * *

John's first solo flight had been the day after his sixteenth birthday. Closed in the Sedes Facultatium's iron embrace, he thought of the throb of the Cessna's engines, the jolt of nine knot winds catching the wings, the utter and absolute blue of the sky. He hadn't felt nervous once, his heart pounding with excitement but never nerves, not when taxiing down the runway, not in the air, not for three textbook landings. Twelve hours of flight-time logged, and he'd known what he was doing like he knew how to walk. He was flying, and he never wanted to come down.

He wondered what he'd remember, after this. If it would be better to remember it all, even if he couldn't do it anymore; or easier to lose the memories along with the rest.

Once he had been seated and locked in, Dux Yerrith had left to take care of some business or other, leaving John to meditate in the company of two of the indigo-and-orange clothed servants. They silently fussed with the instrument, adjusting it so the metal bars didn't dig into his thighs and the slant was slightly less uncomfortable. One of them brought him water, putting the cup to his mouth and tilting it. "Thanks," John said when he was done drinking, and the servant wordlessly ducked his—her?—smoothly shaved head.

They installed a crystal in the metal grip above him. John tipped back his head to stare up at it. Unlike the lucent blue stone before, this one was milky white, opaque; a blank slate, waiting to be filled.

Helicopters, John thought. Totally different skill from a fixed-wing aircraft. He'd picked up hovering faster than anyone else in his squadron, but it had still taken time to master, the constant cyclic balancing of yaw and pitch. He'd overcompensated, the first time he'd lifted up in that dart on Ford's planet, thinking he was in a Harrier when it really handled more like a Pave Hawk in the atmosphere. If he could keep choppers, at least...

Helicopters, and the puddlejumpers—anyone could fly a jumper, anyone who had the gene, and they couldn't take that from him; it was written into his DNA, inscribed in every cell. He'd be able to take up the jumpers still, didn't need a pilot's license for those. There were no airman certificates in Pegasus. He'd still have the sky over Atlantis.

John tried not to think about how after three years of flight training, Rodney was getting better in the jumpers, but flying still didn't come naturally to him, nervous sweat always breaking out on his brow when he had to take the controls. For all that Rodney had no particular fear of flying, even enjoyed learning, every steady climb and banked turn was a conscious, calculated effort for him—all that will and genius, but no talent to back it up.

"Haven't you always wanted to be able to fly the jumper in a straight line?" John had told Rodney, down in the dungeon. "Or we can bring someone else in to get it—just have to make sure they have the gene, right, don't want to waste that."

"Are you insane?" Rodney had demanded, loud enough to cut over Ronon and Teyla's outcry. "Sheppard, you're not going to do this, we need—"

"Yeah, we have to make sure someone gets it, if you don't want to," John had said. "At least one of the three slots we've got left. Might need someone who knows how to fly a dart, someday," and then he'd followed Yerrith back up the dungeon stairs.

"So how long will this take?" John asked now, wetting his lips with his tongue. He'd just drunk their water, but the gray chamber was too dry. "Don't have all day. I'm a busy guy, places to be."

He wasn't really expecting an answer, but one of the servants replied, in a light tenor or low alto, carefully not looking into his face, "Not long, Dux Colonel, once the preparations are complete."

John darted another glance at the pale crystal over his head. "So we haven't, uh, started yet?"

"Not yet, Dux Colonel. Once Dux Yerrith returns, we'll begin."

"Great," John said. "Um. I don't suppose either of you have any idea what this is like..."

"I have received two skills and offered one," the same servant replied, eyes still politely averted.

John scrutinized the speaker's features, past the silver dusting her face, sparkling eyeliner and lipstick. A woman, he thought, to tell by the round cheeks, and there might have been the swell of small breasts under her robe, but he wouldn't swear to it. She looked pretty young, not over thirty, and not obviously marked; calm and courteous, but her low voice had more life than a lobotomy patient's, anyway.

He asked her, "It really doesn't hurt?"

"Just as Dux Yerrith told you, the procedure is painless."

"Yeah, and afterwards?"

"A day's aches, no worse than when you overindulge in spirits."

"What about after that?" John said quietly.

The woman's gaze almost met his, then glided away without engaging. "It...can take a little time to adjust. You may forget that you no longer can do what once came easily."

"What'd you give up?" When she hesitated, John said, "Never mind, you don't have to tell me if it's breaking taboo or anything. I don't know the manners around here, I'm just curious."

"No, forgive my rudeness for not answering you, Dux Colonel. There's no taboo. Only..." She glanced at her fellow servant, standing stolidly by, then said, soft and quick, "My mother taught me to dance, when I was young. She came from Oshazyo, and traded much to earn a place on Challidas, but the dancing she kept. I thought I'd keep it for my own self—but then the Wraith came. I'd already received the one skill I was granted as one of Yerrith's Vasis. But the Wraith might come again, and I thought—dancing means nothing, when you don't have the skill to fight, to survive. And now my dance is safe in the archives, and my son or daughter or grandchildren may someday receive it. It was a worthy trade.

"Though some nights yet, I'll wake from dreams believing my body still remembers the rhythms my mother taught me, until I hear the songs and cannot recall the motions. But it doesn't hurt, Dux Colonel."

"Sure," John said. When he closed his eyes he saw blue skies, brighter than the dingy whitewashed stone walls. "Sure."

 

* * *

From the angles of the Sedes' iron bars secured around him, it was impossible for John to see his watch, so he didn't know how long he had been waiting. Under an hour, he thought, but it felt longer, felt interminable. Didn't feel long enough. In a few more hours this would be over—would all be over, and they'd fly the jumper back to the gate, back to Atlantis. Rodney would fly the jumper back, and John felt a hot, sick curling in his belly that he knew would be jealousy, once they were in the air, if not a feeling even more hateful.

They were supposed to be making preparations, but the servants had retreated to stand watch by the chamber's entrance, not facing him. So maybe John was supposed to be preparing himself, however you were meant to do that. He didn't care; no way was he going to be ready for this. Even if he'd made the decision willingly—would make the same decision again, and yet when the iron portal blocking the chamber's entrance grinded aside, he almost called out, almost said he'd changed his mind.

Wanted to renege, like a damn coward; his team was buried in an underground dungeon, with only himself to speak for them, and he almost, almost wanted to say, _take one of them_. Could have picked any of them—Rodney with all his science, no one would notice the loss of a theorem or two, there were so many stuffed in that big brain of his. Or Ronon, all those hard-won survival skills he'd only learned because he had to and didn't need now that he was sheltered in Atlantis. Or Teyla, who'd been so willing, who knew how to deal and bargain and understood prices paid. Any of them, John could choose—and they wouldn't blame him for it, either; they'd already volunteered, they'd make the trade for him and wouldn't even ask him to explain himself.

He'd been fed on by alien vampires and mind-probed by renegade robots, and this was all it took to break him—wasn't that pathetic. He'd been trapped in that time dilation field for six months and his feet never left the ground, and it hadn't killed him. He wasn't just a pilot anymore; he'd still have his rank and his job and Atlantis. Hell, Elizabeth would probably argue for disability benefits, injuries incurred on an official mission.

So he bit his tongue when the door opened, almost hard enough to bleed. But it wasn't Yerrith, only another servant, with a silver tray instead of brass, and a painted ceramic plate holding a single lozenge like a hard candy, a small sticky bit of green. "If you would allow this to melt on your tongue, Dux Colonel," the new servant said in an obviously masculine baritone, for all his gold glitter make-up.

"What is it?"

The woman who had spoken to him before turned to answer. "The simulaum opens those paths in the self that will be extracted," she explained. "It will allow you to see and do and practice your skill, in your mind, without your body moving from the Sedes."

"A hallucinogen?" John asked, staring at the lozenge. LSD or PCP; bound to be a bad trip, either way. "Fine, give it here," and he opened his mouth.

" _Wait_." The command halted the servant as he picked up the plate. Obediently he stopped, and Dux Yerrith stepped around him to confront John.

She faced him, but she didn't look at him, her eyes raised to a point left of his head. Her gracious smile was absent, mouth a grooved, flat line. "Remove him from the Sedes," she ordered, flicking her fingers at the two men who had come in behind her, wearing the magenta and cyan of the dungeon.

They complied, unlatching and parting the black iron cage and bodily yanking John up from the ridged seat. "What is this?" he demanded, wrenching his arms out of their grips. "We had a deal—"

"The deal holds, Vas Colonel," Yerrith said, icily. "This misunderstanding can be forgiven, since it was honestly explained in time. Vasis lying about their skills aren't tolerated on Challidas, but you are not Challidan, and for that we'll honor the trade."

"Misunderstanding? What do you mean, lying—"

"Vas McKay told me how you were granted authority to trade, that it was not your choice to do so, but Dux Elizabeth's command."

"Well, yeah, she's my boss, she calls the shots."

"I appreciate your position. And understand, too, the value of our trade to you, such that you felt you had no choice but to misrepresent your skills. So we'll honor the deal as arranged. When the extraction's done, all four of you will be free to leave our world, and the three skills promised we'll give, whenever you wish to claim them. Further trading—that will depend on the final value of the skill offered now." She nodded at her dungeon keepers. "Take him to the others."

"Wait," John protested, as the guards took his arms again, began to pull him towards the portal, "what skill offered, I haven't—"

The servant with the tray was tall enough that John didn't see his teammate behind him, until Rodney stepped forward, towards the Sedes. His head was down, ducked away from John, and his broad shoulders were set under his gray jacket.

"Wait a damn minute!" John dug his heels in. "McKay, what the hell did you tell them?"

"Just the truth, _Vas Colonel_." Rodney shrugged, one shoulder lifted up and down, then raised his head, his jaw thrust out belligerently. He still didn't look at John, staring at the Sedes instead like a deer in headlights.

"He's lying!" John snapped. "Whatever he told you—Yerrith—Dux Yerrith, don't listen to him, it's bullshit!" At the beckoning of the servants in orange and blue, Rodney sat down in the black throne, shifting awkwardly to find the proper seating on the ridged metal bars, now set for John.

"Get _out_ of that thing, McKay!" John ordered. "You're not—" The servants were closing the cage over Rodney, securing it in place. "You're not doing this—Atlantis needs all your skills, goddamn it—we had a deal!"

The guards had dragged him over the threshold by the time Rodney finally looked up at John. His usual pasty complexion looked sickly against the black metal. "Don't worry about it, Colonel," he said. "I've got this one covered."

Then the hexagonal iron door slammed back over the entrance, sealing Yerrith and his teammate and the hungry vulture of the Sedes Facultatium behind it.

 

* * *

Even when John could see his watch, time still inched by excruciatingly slowly. One hour, two, three—the dungeon guards brought them food, water and crumbly yellow bread sweet enough to pass for genuine Georgia cornbread—four hours, and hadn't they said the process wouldn't take long?

"We do not know exactly what Dr. McKay told Dux Yerrith," Teyla had told him, when they'd first pushed John into the blindingly clashing dungeon cell. "He was quite insistent to speak with her, however, and she soon took him from the cell to hear more."

"He said you weren't a Dux any more than you were actually a pilot," Ronon said. "That you were making up that stuff about flying darts."

"And you didn't tell her he was lying out of his ass?" John demanded.

Teyla and Ronon looked at one another; then Teyla said, "He had no opportunity to explain the details of his plan to us, but Rodney had one. He was quite evidently confident of that."

"Yeah, and did it occur to you that his plan might be to throw himself into that Sedes to get his brain drained?"

"McKay wouldn't do that," Ronon said. He was wan from the messy wound scabbing on his forehead, his face an unhealthy shade of hangover green under the tan, but when John asked, Ronon had just grunted, "Head aches, that's all."

John shot him a glare now. "You know damn well McKay can pick the lousiest times to show off his heroic streak."

"He'd risk his life, easy," Ronon said. "Same as any of us. But his brain's worth more to him."

"Perhaps he realized a way to preserve his mind, such that he can give the Challidans their skill but not lose it himself?" Teyla suggested.

Ronon stretched out on the bench. "Or else he figured out how to break that chair of theirs. Either way, he's got a plan."

But four hours later, that plan hadn't gotten them out of the technicolor Challidan dungeon, and John had just about had it. After searching for nonexistent weaknesses in the cell's solid stone walls, he'd started playing tic-tac-toe games with himself in his head, staring at the magenta and cyan check murals; now whenever he blinked he kept seeing yellow and green afterimages. And the black lines between them, rigid iron twined into an uncanny throne, and if Rodney had been in that hotseat for this long, if what they'd extracted had been so interesting that they'd just kept extracting... Dusting off his hands, John pushed himself to his feet. "Okay, kids, that's it. We're busting the hell out of here."

"Great." Ronon still looked like the fourth day of a three day bender, but the curved dagger had appeared in his fist again, and his grimace showed a bloodthirsty flash of teeth. Itching to try out his new skill, maybe. John was in the mood to give him the chance.

Teyla glanced between them. "I share your feelings, but the guards would be foolish not to expect an escape attempt." But she stood with them.

"Hey!" John hollered, kicking the bars to rattle them, "get down here, we got a bone to pick, you dumb SOBs!" He glanced at Ronon, saw him slide into position, braced with the knife hidden between his fingers.

When the two guards finally appeared on the stairs, John raised his hand behind his back in silent command to Ronon, _wait for it_. Once they were close enough, John would lash out and grab the shorter man through the bars while Ronon took out the other one, and Teyla could snatch the key in the first guy's hands—

The key he slid into the lock, swinging wide the barred door. "You can go," he said cheerfully. "Dux Yerrith says the deal's done."

At the top of the stairs, they were presented with their weapons, none the worse for wear; then lead through the bewildering, brilliant-hued passages. It wasn't until the third left turn that Ronon stopped and growled, "No, the Sedes is that way," pointing behind them.

"What are you trying to pull?" John demanded, grip sliding reassuringly around his P-90, bringing up the muzzle. Ronon's knives were great and all, but give him a solid submachine gun any day.

The guards only stared at them, confused. "Our teammate," Teyla said, and her voice was steady, as were her hands on her own P-90. "We were told he would return with us."

"He is here." So saying, Dux Yerrith appeared from an unexpected side passage, with a pair of her ever-present servants, and Rodney between them. His head was down and he was walking with his usual distracted, determined stride, but at half-speed, like a wind-up toy winding down.

"The extraction was successfully completed," Yerrith said, satisfied.

"McKay," John said, ignoring her, and then, "Hey!" as Rodney almost rammed into him mid-stride. He stumbled and John caught his elbow, then hastily shifted his grip as Rodney sagged, half his weight tilting into John.

He blinked, frowning up at John. "Sheppard?"

"Hey, buddy," John said, dropping his tone as he got a good look at Rodney's eyes, pupils blown to black holes even in the bright corridor. Still stoned on whatever drug had been in that candy lozenge. "How you doin'?"

"Oh, fine," Rodney said, sounding disconcertingly normal given the way he was cross-eyed and upright only thanks to John's firm hold on his arm. He blinked again, frowned harder and waved his free hand aimlessly. "You look ridiculous with green hair. Doesn't suit you at all."

"Okay," John said, "I'll have to do something about that." He looked over Rodney's head to glare at Dux Yerrith.

She returned the look with placid directness. "The effects of the simulaum will wear off within a few hours, Vas Colonel. By evening tomorrow he'll be entirely recovered." She didn't sound as obsequious as she had when they'd first arrived, but not as coldly angry, either.

"Recovered," John repeated. Somewhere in these decorated halls, on a shelf or in a box or whatever they did with their archive, there was a crystal with part of Rodney, a piece of what Rodney McKay was, taken from him.

Before coming to Pegasus, John hadn't known you could get this angry, that you could choke on rage until you couldn't breathe from it.

"So the trade," Teyla said, and her voice was so very, frighteningly even. "It is finished?"

"No," Yerrith said, unafraid because she was too ignorant to know she should be. "We still owe you. Three skills. If you wish them now, Vas McKay's, or another—"

"No," John ground out. "No, we're good." Ronon moved to Rodney's other side and slung an arm around his shoulders, easily supporting him despite their difference in height.

"Then, when you wish," Yerrith said. "We'll expect you. And we look forward to trading again."

"Don't count on it," John said, then didn't move fast enough when Yerrith stepped forward.

Ronon did, blaster drawn and aimed at Yerrith's gray-haired head in the blink of an eye, but though her servants twitched, the woman herself paid him no mind. She reached up to clasp Rodney's shoulders, tipped her head in, not quite touching his, in a parody of the Athosian gesture. "Vas McKay," she said, "we thank you for what you gave us. It will be treasured."

The most appalling part was how sincere she sounded. Enough to knock Rodney out of the drugged daze to stare at her and mumble, "Uh. Sure. Whatever," in the inept way he did whenever he was unexpectedly confronted with gratitude. Though John would bet he was too far gone to remember what he was being thanked for.

"What's the fastest way out of here?" John demanded, pulling away from Rodney and letting Ronon take their teammate's unsteady weight. The P-90's polymer grip was sweat-slicked and creaking under his grasp.

Yerrith looked regretful, of all the damned things. "We will show you to your craft immediately, Vas Colonel."

 

* * *

They couldn't get back to the jumper fast enough, as far as John was concerned. And Rodney slowed them down further, aware enough to resist letting Ronon throw him over his shoulder and run, but stumbling to a halt now and again to mention to Teyla how lovely her wings were and how he really did quite like birds, or to make the inane, if reassuringly accurate, observation that Ronon was very, very tall.

John would have been more worried if he hadn't seen Rodney loopy on morphine a couple times before. As far as he could tell, drugs didn't slow down the speeding bullet express that was the McKay train of thought, they just derailed it. The team tolerantly endured his off-track ramblings—fortunately Rodney didn't pause to check if they were following any more than he ever did. And Yerrith's servants, guiding them out of the tunnels, had the smarts not to so much as glance in his direction, much less snicker. Maybe it was respect for someone who'd offered a skill, or maybe they were aware of how close John's finger was to his gun's trigger.

Once in the jumper, Ronon deposited Rodney in one of the passenger seats, and John took a second to breathe, restore his equilibrium. Teyla put her hand on Rodney's arm. "How do you feel?"

"Mm? Oh, okay." Rodney was peering at the trees outside the jumper's windshield. "British Columbia? When'd we get back to Earth?" He sounded disappointed.

"We are not on Earth, Rodney," Teyla answered patiently. "We are returning to Atlantis now."

"Ah, that's why you're here." Rodney thought for a moment. "What about the Replicators?"

"We defeated them."

"So they haven't come back yet?"

"No," Ronon told him.

"Good," Rodney said. He took another moment to consider. "I'm kind of messed up now, huh."

"Just a little confused," John said. "You're going to be fine." The _or else_ went unspoken. The jumper had a full complement of drones; it wouldn't take all of them to burrow down to where the Sedes was buried, he didn't think. "Rodney," John said, standing over his teammate to get his attention.

For all the black expanse of his pupils, Rodney's eyes looked bluer than ever, vague and unfocused. "Hmm?"

"The trade. What'd you give them?" _What'd you give up?_

"Um, you know." Rodney waved absently, slumped in the seat. "Something new. To them. That's what they wanted, something they didn't have." His smile to himself was oddly soft. "She said it was a good trade. Wonderful, she said, that woman, Yorick or whatever—she thanked me for it. Since she didn't know..." He shrugged, an uncoordinated roll of his shoulders. "She thought it was good. So that's okay, it all worked out." Something seemed to occur to him, and he worked to sit up. "Are we back on Atlantis yet?"

"Almost," John said. He moved to the pilot's seat, Ronon taking the co-pilot's position beside him.

The moment John touched the controls, the ship responding to his touch with the sensitivity of a living thing, he felt a rush like he had the first time he had sat in a jumper, two decades of flying fulfilled by a craft that answered every demand he might make. That he could have lost this...

That his friend might have lost it instead, or more—the thrill was ashes in his mouth. "Hang in there," John said, and he took them into the sky, took them home.

 

* * *

Beckett and a medic team met them in the jumper bay at John's order, whisked Rodney—conscious but groggy and still out of it—away on a gurney, Ronon tagging along after. John and Teyla gave Elizabeth a bare-bones debriefing and then headed down to the infirmary themselves. Beckett was just finishing the medical scans when they arrived, took some time more to study them in detail.

His final report was unrevealing. "I don't see any evident trauma to Rodney's brain, or to Ronon's, either. Their EEGs and CT scans are normal, as far as I can determine. Rodney's waking results might be different—we'll try tomorrow, once the drug in his system's fully broken down. He's sleeping it off now, and I'd rather he come out of it naturally."

"And Lieutenant Mitsotakis and his team's scans are all still normal?" Elizabeth asked.

"Aye, and I've had them in six times now. If this Sedes the colonel describes did any damage, it's not something any of our instruments, or the Ancients', can detect." Carson looked at Ronon. "Still, even if the headache's gone tomorrow, I'll want you to be coming in for a few more tests, lad. Can't be too careful."

Ronon nodded. His brow was still creased with the throne's hangover, but John didn't think his distracted look was just from that migraine. He thought he caught the gleam of a blade in Ronon's fist again.

After dinner, Ronon disappeared. It didn't take John long to track him down, practicing alone in one of the unused corridors near the designated gymnasium area.

John propped his shoulder against the doorframe and watched for a moment. Teyla's katas were familiar to him, the rhythm of combat slowed to a practiced grace. But Ronon rarely bothered with form; when sparring he'd pull his punches enough not to maim, but a fight was never anything less than a real fight, to him. And when he exercised alone, it was always with killing intent, as hard and fast as he could push himself.

This time was no different, in speed or strength, but John had never seen Ronon move quite like this. He had knives in his hands, four of them, which ones of his collection John couldn't tell, they were whirling so fast. And with them he was—well, you couldn't say dancing, but juggling was the wrong word for moves this obviously deadly, and to call it exercise was to deny the sheer breathtaking, lethal grace of it. Watching him slice and stab, John could see invisible phantom opponents dropping around him like flies.

Then Ronon twisted around, and three of the blades flew like arrows from his fingers. They thunked into the cerametallic paneling six inches from John's head, in a line so perfect that John knew the knives could've as easily been sent straight into his eyes, before he would have had time to blink.

The fourth, the curved dagger, Ronon twirled around his fingers like he spun his gun, smirking at John. "Yeah," he said, "that's how I remember it."

He had that hungry look in his eyes again. Bloodthirsty—no, more than that; amazed, almost worshipful.

John looked from Ronon to the knives buried two inches deep in the panel. "You're going to have to pay for that," he remarked, though those particular panels were decoration only, no crystal circuitry behind them, and would self-seal over most damage. The knives were all aligned on the grooved border of the panel precisely, John noticed. "Good shot. Throw, whatever."

Ronon crossed over to yank out his knives. The paneling closed up over the gashes with a faint sucking sound. He studied the blades. "That's better than I can do," he said.

"Lucky shot?"

"Not luck." Ronon had spun and thrown one of the knives again before John registered he was moving, the blade whistling all the way down the hall. It slammed into another of the decorative panels, dead center.

Bull's eye. John whistled. "You know, mad knife-throwing skills will come in handy next time we're on a hive ship, trying to get the cell door open. Not that your skills weren't mad before," he hasted to add, "but—"

"Not like this," Ronon said.

"So you actually feel like you're getting better? With the knives?"

Ronon shook his head. "Don't feel it like that." He opened and closed his fingers, then jogged over to retrieve his knife from the wall. "My hands know what they're doing. Better than they did."

Something twisted in John's gut, sick and hot. "You didn't practice, you weren't taught. You just know it, now."

"Yeah." Ronon came back over, studying the knife with weird astonishment, as if it had thrown itself. "I once was taught a few Tiloctigit moves. But not these."

"They're not yours. Not your _skill_ ," and the word hurt in his mouth like it was sharp enough to cut him, like speaking around one of those curved daggers.

"Not McKay's skill, either," Ronon pointed out, blunt as always.

"We don't know what he gave up," John said. "If he wakes up, and—what if it was his science? Quantum physics, or mathematics, or computer programming, or the mechanical engineering—you know how many things he can do, and he needs all of them, to do what he does here."

"He wouldn't," Ronon said, confident as he had been in the dungeon cell. "McKay's too smart to give them anything important. Maybe he gave them his shooting skills."

"Christ," John muttered, "it was hard enough hammering those into him to begin with." But Rodney had done fine on the team even before he could hit the broad side of a barn with a P-90; they could compensate for that, if it was all he'd lost.

"Or maybe he did give them his knife skills," and Ronon grinned. "He's pretty fast buttering muffins."

"Or carving up salisbury steak. Or maybe he showed them how to use chopsticks."

"Or how to play with one of those whatsits." Ronon mimed.

"A yoyo." Rodney could walk-the-dog and a few other tricks. Scientists tended to like things that kept their hands busy, John had noticed. And wouldn't that have been a way to stick it to the Challidans, offer them some absolutely worthless skill.

But Dux Yerrith had thanked him. _She said it was a good trade._ Somehow John doubted Rodney could have gotten out of that throne for a price as low as handling flatware or kids' toys.

So what had he paid, then?

 

* * *

John rose early, and stopped by the infirmary before his morning jog, to find Rodney had already woken up and checked himself out. When he went to the labs, Dr. McKay was in fine form, traumatizing three new junior technicians with gruesome descriptions of the effects of toxic waste gases on the human body.

Rodney's knowledge of chemistry was still graphically intact, anyway, and his talent for ranting. Teyla, sitting in the back of the lab, watched the proceedings with a meditative serenity veiling amusement, though the hapless techs would probably take her quiet smile as sympathy. When John sat next to her, she murmured, "I've been here for half an hour. He seems much himself."

"Beckett's scans this morning came up clean, too," John told her, and they sat back and watched the show. Rodney on a tear was not to be missed, and he was in a mood this morning—still had a headache, John noted, from the way he kept prodding his temples and gulping coffee. Carson hadn't sounded too concerned about it, since that symptom had dissipated without harm in everyone else who had been in the Sedes. Besides, Rodney routinely plowed through sleep deprivation migraines and caffeine withdrawal, so it wasn't like Carson could've kept him from work anyway.

It wasn't slowing him down today any. Once he was through with the technicians, Rodney spent a few minutes lambasting their supervisor, then moved onto his own project, something with the power distribution systems, skipping through screens of mathematic formulas and Ancient text faster than John could follow.

John got his laptop and made himself comfortable, stretched out on his usual lab bench finding busy work to distract himself from writing up the Challidas mission report. Precisely at noon, Atlantis standard time, he closed his computer, ambled over and shut down Rodney's as well, mid-equation.

"Lunchtime," he declared, over Rodney's protesting squawk. "Beckett asked me to keep an eye on you. And the Challidan guards told Ronon that food would help the headache, same probably goes for you."

In the mess, John couldn't help but watch Rodney's hands as they got trays and sat down—he was never especially dexterous with fork and knife, preferring to get the food to his mouth with promptness over etiquette, and that hadn't changed any, that John could see. No more than his typing had slowed, or his facility with the figures and numbers and symbols of his sciences.

Same old Rodney, sharp eyes and quick tongue and his hands always in elaborate, expressive motion. John wanted to feel relieved, but his stomach was still knotted tight, making eating a chore, and he couldn't stop watching Rodney, studying him. Looking for that missing piece, what they'd left behind yesterday, flying back through the gate.

Rodney of course couldn't endure it for long. He lasted all of five minutes before snapping, "What? Am I breaking out in spots? Extraterrestrial chicken pox?"

"Nothing." Rodney glared, and John asked, "Do you remember going to Challidas?"

"You mean, where we were all day yesterday? I'd think it's obvious that I do, or else I'd have a few questions about how I lost a day and woke up in the infirmary this morning."

"You remember all of it?" John pressed. "You were pretty out of it."

Rodney flapped a negating hand, soup spoon waggling. "Everything after I took the drug's hazy, but I didn't black out. Not until after we were back on Atlantis." He eyed John speculatively. "And you with green hair was hideous, hallucination or not. Like you had grass growing up there that needed mowing."

"So you remember being in the Sedes."

"To an extent." Rodney shifted in his chair. "I didn't...on that drug, I was a bit disoriented, you might've noticed. So I wasn't exactly aware of where I actually was. But, yes, I remember. It was..." He trailed off, staring down at his hands, stilled and resting on the tray.

"They told me it wouldn't hurt," John said.

"No." Rodney shook his head. "It didn't." He picked up his utensils again, dug into his plate.

"Rodney," John asked, "what'd you give them?"

Rodney forked up broiled black carrots vindictively. "Something neither I nor Atlantis will miss." He glared at John over the forkful. "Unlike certain other things. Such as, oh, twenty years of piloting experience. Did it occur to you, Sheppard, when you were trying out the role of noble martyr, that even if you pass on the flight training, you can't pass on the gene? If we ever get to the point we can fly this city, you're our best bet for piloting it; no one else can handle the chair like you can. Fat lot of good it would do us, if the only person with a sufficiently strong expression of the ATA gene doesn't know how to fly anymore."

He took a bite of carrots, made a pleased hum. "Mm, Corporal Flemming must've gotten to these, too."

"Rodney..."

"Might've been worth it, if we can eat like this from now on. How the heck can you transfer cooking skills, anyway? Superior taste awareness? Or knowledge of Pegasus spices? Maybe I should ask for that skill myself, when the Challidans'll let me use the Sedes again."

"We're not going back there," John said. He looked down at his plate, the clear glaze over the alien carrots, and pushed away the tray, feeling ill.

"It's a waste, you know," Rodney said. When John looked up, Rodney had crossed his arms, glowering at him.

"Starving millions in Africa, I know."

"Not the food." McKay made a dismissive gesture. "If we don't put the skills to good use—then there was no point to trading."

"Flemming could barely fry an egg, before. This isn't his ability," John said. "We don't know whose it used to be. Who they used to cook for—a five-star restaurant, their family, we don't know." He got up, bussed his tray with most of the food untouched, and grabbed a sandwich on his way out. Bread, turkey, cheese, mayonnaise—didn't take much skill to slap one of those together; anybody could do it.

 

* * *

Elizabeth took them off the mission roster for a week, just to be careful. Rodney complained only until he was back ensconced in his lab, whereupon he realized how much of the backlog he could catch up on. It was going to be difficult to drag him back out into the field after seven days.

John stopped by the infirmary in a couple days, to make sure Rodney and Ronon had been reporting for their scans as ordered. "They've been cooperative enough," Carson told him. "And no, I haven't found anything anomalous."

At John's request he went over some of the scans, as well as those of Mitsotakis's team. Most patient confidentiality was signed away when one joined the SGC; alien conditions needed to be studied and examined in detail. "These are MRIs of Dr. Aubin," Beckett explained, showing him the colored slides on the computer. "Who, as you know, couldn't swim a stroke two weeks ago, and now can lap Atlantis. I asked her to imagine she was swimming for these scans—as you can see, while such visualizing doesn't wholly approximate the behavior, there is an increase in activation in the cortex here."

John peered at the colored spots. "So is that normal, or?"

"It's about where one would expect it," Carson said, "though of course every individual mentally processes activity a little differently. There's no one area of the brain exclusively dedicated to swimming—our brains are very versatile instruments; complex behavior is an integration of many various neural networks. This is how stroke victims can often relearn abilities they initially lose, even though lost neurons don't regrow—their minds learn how to route information processing around the damaged areas. It's also, I'll wager, how the Challidan machine does what it does, potentiating unused synapses. Otherwise you'd stand to lose an ability for every skill you received, if the neural connections were written over—but that's not what happens."

"No," John confirmed. "Not from what they told us. But people recover from strokes—you're saying the skills that get extracted could be relearned after all?"

Carson sighed. "I'm not sure. Theoretically it might be possible, but if the Challidans say it's unlikely...strokes can cause a permanent decrease in facility; rehabilitation's far from perfect. And in the case of a natural talent—if the pathways damaged by the extraction process were unique, there might not be an adequate replacement. It's hard to say, not knowing more about the procedure itself. I've been over the readings Rodney took of the Sedes in action, when Ronon was in it, but a single data set doesn't tell me much."

"Rodney wanted to see it again—on himself, actually," John said. And if he had just gone through with it then, no questions asked, then he wouldn't have been allowed to offer later; he couldn't have replaced John in the Sedes...

"Aye, to have a comparison case would be useful." Carson nodded. "Though as it stands now...if we didn't get out of this one scot-free, it still could've been worse." The look the doctor gave him was pointed. John had seen the mission reports himself; Rodney's had been more thorough than John's own, if still lacking in crucial details.

"Has Rodney mentioned what got extracted?" John asked.

"He's tested himself for associated losses," Carson said, not exactly an answer. "There's nothing significant, as far as we've been able to determine. The damage from the extraction was isolated and specific."

"But do you know what it was?"

The doctor looked at him. "I think that's for him to tell you, John."

 

* * *

When Rodney turned down the challenge of a chess game two nights running, John thought he might be onto something. The third evening he came by the lab, Rodney was again fussing over some insanely complex mathematical exploit or another, but when John asked he shoved aside his laptop in a frustrated fit and said, "Sure, fine."

He then cleaned John's clock in two lightning-fast games. When he first checked John in the third match, he glared across the board and said suspiciously, "Are you _letting_ me win, Sheppard?"

"No," John denied, and moved out of a check into a rook fork that had Rodney swearing. But John was still off his game, and McKay was playing with atypical focus. Usually Rodney was distracted by a million and a half passing thoughts, so that he'd walk into basic traps and lose his queen capturing pawns, only realizing his mistakes after he'd taken his hand off his piece, and his freak-outs then never failed to entertain. But tonight he was focused on the board like he had something to prove.

What, though, John couldn't guess. He had pulled Zelenka aside that afternoon, asked him if Rodney had been any different in the labs. The exact nature of his infirmary stay post-Challidas hadn't been made public, but any questions about Rodney's abilities could be attributed to standard concerns of post-traumatic stress. There was a running pool in the science division about what day of the week McKay would suffer a nervous breakdown anyway.

But Radek had shaken his head, replied, "He is as exasperatingly know-it-all as always. If possibly a bit shorter of temper of late, is that what you mean?"

"Not really. There aren't any projects he's been particularly avoiding, have you noticed?"

Zelenka narrowed his eyes. "If you are referring to the upcoming employee evaluations, then yes, McKay has most resiliently resisted any mention of these whatsoever. Also he has removed himself from the maintenance rotation for the eighth time running, despite having now no excuse of off-world missions."

"His science work, though, he's been keeping up with that?"

"I am hardly Rodney's keeper," Radek protested, "but of his projects I'm familiar with, he's neglected none that I can think of. And he seems near a breakthrough with the jumper power management—if successful, that could be of critical importance, and the way he's applying himself I believe he'll pull it off, as only he can—" Then he shoved up his glasses, hurriedly added, "Though if you would please not tell him I said so, Colonel."

Watching Rodney now, studying the chessboard with his brows drawn up in concentration, John could see no difference, no sign that his friend now was any less the man he had been the week before. Here or in the labs, he seemed to be as aggravating and obnoxious and shockingly smart as ever.

Rodney had two PhDs and a host of minor degrees. He was an expert in more fields than your average layman had heard of; halve his IQ and he'd probably still be above average intelligence. Knowledge to spare.

 _A trade where you lose nothing, and we all gain._ But nothing was that simple.

"Checkmate," Rodney said, but his scowl wasn't triumphant. "What's going on with you, Sheppard? I've never beaten you three times running."

"Want to play computer golf instead?" John watched him. "Or were video games an associated loss?"

"The hell?" Rodney stared back at John, confused.

"If there's anything I should avoid suggesting, I need to know about it, to avoid it," John said.

Rodney's mouth went tight and flat, a slash slanted downward. He stood up from the desk. "Yeah, because you're avoiding it so well now. Carson told me you've been talking to him. Here's what you need to know, Colonel—it's none of your business."

He was out John's door before John could say anything.

 

* * *

John found Ronon practicing with his knives in the hallway again.

John had been on his way to the gym for his own exercise—jogging wasn't cutting it tonight; and while he'd never been particularly good at boxing, he felt the need to whale on a bag for a while. But the thud of thrown knives caught his attention, and once he saw Ronon in motion, it was hard to stop watching.

Ronon was faster now than he had been, gone from impressive to impossible. The Challidans had said the skill would take a few days to set, and Carson had confirmed that, by his understanding of the process; but this. This wasn't what John had expected, the arcing flash and whirl of four blades, each moving seemingly separately, as if Ronon had grown an extra pair of arms.

He was breathing hard when he stopped, a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and John wondered how long he had been at it. He tossed Ronon his water bottle; Ronon drank deep and dropped himself on the bench along the corridor wall, knives returned to their concealed sheaths.

"So...that's coming along, looks like," John said, slouching on the bench beside him.

Ronon nodded. "Getting there."

"I thought the Challidans said something about only having a minor mastery?"

"Uh-huh. I'm close to that, probably."

"That was _minor_?"

"Compared to a knife-play adept?" Ronon grinned. "Yeah, that's minor."

"So what are the chances we could bring a couple of these adepts on for hire?"

"Not so good. Tiloctik was culled. Scorched, like Sateda. Thirty, forty years ago, before I was born."

"Oh." John looked over at his teammate, Ronon sitting tired and relaxed, elbows casually crooked on his knees. "But you knew them."

"The Tiloctigit were—allies, you'd say, with Sateda. A little more advanced than us, making spaceships, bombs like the Genii's. Guess that's why the Wraith wiped them."

"And some of them—Tiloctigit people—they were living on Sateda, then?"

"Yeah, but I never met them." Ronon drew one knife, the curved dagger. Its blade, about as long as Ronon's middle finger and twice the width, was blue steel, rippled with its smelting like a Japanese katana. Its hilt was wrapped with leather cording. "About a year after I became a Runner," Ronon said, calmly, like Running had been his choice, like he hadn't been arbitrarily made the quarry of a depraved interstellar fox hunt, "I met a Tiloctigit adept. Ehrz. Not a real Runner; no implant. But he was running. From the Wraith, from everything. He'd been running since Tiloctik got culled.

"He was an old man by then. Seventy, or more. And strong enough to kill me anytime, didn't matter if I was ready for him. He'd show me, once a day. Get a blade close enough to my gut or my eye that I'd know for sure he could've stuck it in me, if he'd wanted."

"He taught you," John said.

"Yeah. He taught me," Ronon said. "Ten weeks. We ran together, going to a new planet every few days. Killed lots of Wraith. Ehrz said I might make knife-play disciple eventually, if I listened to him."

"So what happened?"

"What else? Wraith killed him." Ronon shrugged. "I was too slow. He was too old. He gave me the chance to get away. Gave me one of his knives, too," and he slid his thumb down the blunt back edge of the silver-blue blade.

"So that's all the knife-play you ever learned?"

"I looked for another Tiloctigit master. Never found one. Didn't think I'd ever have the chance to learn—there're no Tiloctigit left; they're another lost people now."

"The master on Challidas was probably a refugee or something," John said. "Paying his way with his skills. Literally." It was sickening to think about, someone who had already lost their home, giving up the last they had left of it to live. War refugees, paying for a place to stay with their family heirlooms, with their pride and memories—but this was worse, giving up a piece of who you were, just to keep breathing.

"Maybe," Ronon said. "I don't know. A minor master would already be getting older. Not as fast as he was. Maybe not so excited about fighting anymore, after the Wraith. He passed on everything to the Challidans. Made sure it was remembered."

"You don't know if it was like that. How they might've coerced him."

"No." Ronon took another long pull of water from the bottle. "But old Ehrz, some nights he'd tell me. How he wished he knew how to carve wood with his knives, instead of flesh and bone."

"What would you do?" John said. "Would you want to give it up? If you didn't have to—" because Ronon had tried, had said he would stay with the Challidans as long as it took, as long as it was him and not his teammates—"would you trade anyway?"

Ronon snorted. "Hells no. I need every skill I got to take out the Wraith."

"And after they're all gone? If you don't need to fight anymore?"

Ronon froze, gave John one of his looks, the alien look, the look that said that they might be teammates and sparring partners and friends, but they'd been born a galaxy apart. "Don't know," he said finally.

"So what do you think he'd tell you now?" John asked. "Your old master—if he could see you with your knives now?"

"Tell me I'm cheating, getting it this easy." Ronon's grin was sharp and silver-bright as the blade between his fingers. "Ehrz, he used to say that 'cheater' was what the dead called the living."

 

* * *

John didn't quite know why he asked Rodney to take out the jumper with him the next morning, suggesting they could experiment with the new power protocols in the air. Except that the team was scheduled for a new mission tomorrow, and McKay could use the chance to get back in the saddle, after last week's break. Also after the chess games last night, John wasn't sure where he stood with Rodney, and if they weren't talking it was better to find that out before they went through the gate.

Rodney was taking offense in the professional way, though, all glowering and _"Colonel"_ and the biggest words he could dredge up from his vocabulary, spat out rapid-fire like he was expecting John to have gone too dumb to follow them. John nodded and humored him, and spent the ascent into the upper atmosphere joking about naming the jumpers after the Enterprise's shuttlecrafts until Rodney finally cracked and snapped, "The _Galileo_? Are you an idiot? Did you even _watch_ the show?"

John smirked, marked a point to himself in the air, and Rodney snarled unintelligibly and buried himself in his tablet's readouts, running around the cargo area poking at the crystals. After a while he said, "Okay, looks good, inertial dampeners are operating at standard capacity but the drain's about a third less, excellent—take her higher, into orbit."

"Got it," and John smoothly brought them up, the unbroken blue desert of the sky above the cloud cover darkening into space's endless night. With Rodney busy in the back, he dropped the HUD and cleared the windshield to invisible, to stare out at the radiant azure arch of the planet, a curve of molten blue and white glass. This high, you could freefall forever, and still always be in the sky.

Presently Rodney wandered back to the cockpit, saying, "Geosynchronous orbit costs us a little more power than expected, but we're still below the...wow."

John didn't need to look away from the planet to know Rodney was staring, just as awed as himself. "Yeah."

"Sometimes it's just—I mean, spaceship, sure, whatever, we walked through a wormhole to another _galaxy_ —but some days, still...wow."

"We have the coolest job ever," John pronounced, with appropriate reverence.

"Yeah." The silence lasted for a moment, wordless in the face of the spectacular, but he wouldn't be Rodney McKay if it bowled him over for long. "This is why, you know," he said.

"Huh?"

Rodney's arms were crossed, jaw fixed tight enough that there was a tic in his cheek. "All this, and you were just going to give it up, throw it away—were you insane? Too long underground, going stir-crazy? Or just the Sheppard martyr complex acting up, been too long since you'd thrown yourself on your metaphorical sword? Because I wouldn't worry about that, I'm sure as soon as we're back in the field you'll get lots more chances."

"It's not like I was taking a vow never to fly again."

"No, you were just making sure you'd be miserable whenever you did—like you're ever happy, sitting in the passenger seat. We have to pry you out of the pilot's chair with a crowbar even when you're concussed or dying."

"I'd have still had the gene," John said. "I could've learned how to fly the jumpers again. Anyone can fly these things."

"Anyone can make them go up and down and forward," Rodney said. "You're the only one who makes them _fly_. And those of us who can fake it, we learned it from you."

"You could've learned it from me. One minute in the Sedes, that's all it would've taken."

It was the wrong thing to say. When Rodney went white with fury instead of red, that was never a good sign. "You think any of us wanted that—that any of us could've taken that? Every time I touched these controls, knowing it was your talent—it'd be like I'd chopped the dead hands off your corpse and were using them to drive—"

"To fly," John corrected, "and also, for the record, eww."

"You didn't have to say piloting," Rodney said. "It's not like that's the only thing you can do. You could've offered them your golfing, for god's sake. Or skateboarding. Or high school French."

"I took Spanish." John blinked. "Did you give them _French_?"

"No," Rodney snapped. "...Offered it, but the Challidans weren't interested," he relented. "Wrong galaxy, not terribly useful. The writing did interest them, but I couldn't very well give up my knowledge of the Latin alphabet, an adult illiterate with two PhDs? Would've been a little weird." He tapped his fingers on the jumper's auxiliary controls. "It took some negotiating. That Dux woman, whats-her-name—she liked what you offered. They need pilot skills, she didn't want to believe me when I said you were a touch psychotic and were lying to score a deal for our extremely demanding leader. Finding something she thought was worth as much—"

"Yeah, who's the martyr here?"

"Give it up, Sheppard, you're the one who was going to throw away everything, your career and your life's ambition and whatever the hell else flying means to you, I don't know what it is, but it's plain on your face, whenever you're in the cockpit."

"But I'm not the one who made the sacrifice."

"It wasn't a sacrifice!" Rodney yelled, and then collapsed back in his chair like the shout had dragged all the breath out of him. "It wasn't—it sounds all noble, calling it that. It wasn't like that. I'm not like that, you know I'm not. I just—I didn't have a choice. Coming back to Atlantis with you grounded—it would've been like you'd gone blind, like you'd lost your arms and legs. Pity, and sympathy, and you'd have been depressed and miserable, and everyone would've had to make allowances and be understanding and I don't have the patience for that. I just don't."

He gestured like he was tossing something away, throwing out baby and bathwater both. "So there wasn't any choice. And it had to be me, you know that. Teyla, Ronon—even if they'd been willing, even if they'd wanted to do it for you. We couldn't let them. Both of them, they were born here, and everything you learn in this galaxy, you learn because you need it. Because it keeps you alive, because it keeps you sane. Asking them to give up anything..."

Teyla had lost her father, and how many other friends and family to the Wraith; had lost Athos when they first came to this galaxy, and then the Ancients had kicked her people off the continent again. And Ronon had lost everything. "It wouldn't be right," John said.

Rodney nodded. "But us—where we grew up, the way we grew up—we had enough. Too much, maybe, more than we needed, and not just food and shelter—education, too."

"You, McKay, over-educated? No!"

"Shut up, I'm making a point. If you'd just thought, back on Challidas—how many things did you learn as a child that you don't even think about now? That have nothing to do with what you do, or who you are—useless skills, atrophying, but still remembered."

"You gave them something you learned as a kid?"

Rodney's eyes narrowed. "I told you, this isn't about me. And I also told you it's none of your business—"

"Hey, team leader, here," John replied. "I need to know what I can count on you to do."

"Is that what that's been about?" Rodney sighed. "All right. Colonel, I swear to you, what was extracted had absolutely nothing to do with and in no way compromises my ability to perform my duties on Atlantis, either as Head of Science or as a member of your team. I still can determine prime numbers, shoot a P-90, and reprogram the shower temperature in your quarters to point one degree Celsius."

"Never doubted it."

"Satisfied?"

"Not really."

Rodney looked like the only reason he wasn't punching John in the nose was because John was technically piloting the jumper, even though they were neatly stationed in low orbit at the moment and there wasn't any space debris to watch out for. "Why not? What do you want me to say?"

"Put it this way," John said. "If I'd gone through with it on Challidas, if you hadn't gotten them to switch us and they got my piloting—and then we came back to Atlantis, and I didn't want to talk about it, and said I was fine, would you believe me?"

"Of course not—" Rodney snapped, and then stopped. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"You're...worried about me."

"You think?" There wasn't much in the way of course corrections to make, but John brought the HUD back up anyway, studied the altitude readouts—cruising steady at three million feet, not bad.

He didn't look over at Rodney—couldn't look at Rodney, not without looking for what was missing. What John was missing, the gap he somehow wasn't seeing. He'd been friends with him for three years—and maybe that shouldn't mean much. He'd had plenty of buddies before, guys he'd hung out with, drank with and played D&D with and they'd saved each other's lives, and if somebody had asked John what color their eyes were, he wouldn't have been able to say.

But with Rodney, friendship was an all-or-nothing proposition; you either hated the guy, or you knew him...and John _knew_ McKay, damn it, knew what kind of movies and what kind of women he liked, had seen a picture of his cat and had met his sister. And now Rodney had been hurt and John couldn't tell where or how badly. Had looked for it—a scar, a wound, an amputation, like what John would've been left with, grounded; and when he didn't see anything, all he could think was internal injury. That his friend was going to bleed out, invisibly, with no way to stop it.

"It is my business," John said. "It was going to be me in the Sedes, and then it wasn't—that's my business."

"I'm fine," Rodney said. "Really, honestly, fine—I'm not drinking myself to sleep every night, or secretly stabbing myself with ballpoint pens, or whatever you've been thinking is going on. Elizabeth did have me go to Heightmeyer a couple times—not so great these days, not since she dyed her hair—but you can ask her, I've got my head on about as straight as it ever is. I'm ready for the mission tomorrow. You listening to me, Sheppard?"

John made himself turn his head, look at Rodney—made himself see his teammate for real, whole and unscarred, wholly there, nothing missing, and his blue eyes on John were cross and anxious at once. Willing John to believe him, to trust him, and John owed him that much.

Owed him a hell of a lot more, but this would have to do. "I got it," John said. "You're fine."

 

* * *

The next day's mission went off without a hitch. As did the one after that, when McKay repaired a malfunctioning Ancient weather-control device in record time, bitching about the pebble-sized hailstones from start to finish; and the mission following that, when Rodney shot a giant six-legged leopard straight through the eyes, two seconds before it had Ronon for a snack.

Meanwhile Elizabeth went over the mission reports and decided that Challidas was better to let be: Continued Contact Not Recommended. So the address was locked out of the dialing database, and John shut the black iron memory of the Sedes away in the big box of things not to talk or think about. And there it might have stayed, except that two weeks later, around midnight, he heard an odd reedy tune floating through Atlantis's corridors.

He followed the unfamiliar melody through the halls, to find Rodney sitting with Teyla outside on a balcony close to her quarters. They both held long, pale wooden pipes dotted with finger-holes, and were puffing out their cheeks to blow through them. The high-pitched whistles were weirdly soothing, until a dissonant squeak made John wince.

"The sea-orange, not the sky-orange," Teyla corrected, and Rodney answered, "Yes, yes, sea, I know, that's what I was trying for."

"If you blow more gently—"

"I know!"

"Rodney," Teyla said, "truly, you are not doing badly. Better than when I first learned the _phukiit_."

"You were _six_."

"Yes, and isn't it true that children learn to speak tongues easier than adults? Besides, these songs were all familiar to me before I learned to play them myself, and they are new to you."

"I like them," Rodney said, with the usual shy abruptness with which he gave any compliment. "The Athosian songs. They're surprisingly complex for primitive—um, for, that is, they weren't what I was expecting. The counterpoint, and the hexatonic scales..."

"If you like them so, perhaps you will practice them more?"

"I have been," Rodney said defensively. "It's just, you know, missions, and experiments, I'm busy. And taking time out to practice the recorder like an elementary school kid...but I appreciate it, Teyla," he blurted, "I really do. Now what was that new song you were going to teach me, the one in the minor mode, I mean, the autumn sphere—"

"Perhaps we should ask John what he would like to hear," Teyla said, and turned her head toward where John was lurking in the corridor.

"Ack," Rodney choked, and scrambled to his feet, making to hide his carved pipe behind him. "Sheppard, how long have you been—um, what do you want?" and then he squared his jaw, took his arm out from behind his back. "Never mind, ask me in the morning. Teyla, same time tomorrow, right?" and he nodded at her and marched past John, flute brandished defiantly.

John took off after him. "Rodney, wait up—what the heck, slow down!"

He caught up with Rodney outside his quarters. Rodney eyed him with stubborn hostility. "Okay, fine. Yes, I'm learning to play the Athosian recorder. Get the harassment out of your system now."

"Harassment? You think I'm going to tease you about music lessons? What is this, seventh grade?" John considered. "Besides, Teyla would totally kick my ass if I did."

Rodney snorted. "Like she doesn't anyway. I've seen your workouts."

"Yeah, but she'd make it seriously hurt. But really, Rodney, it's cool. Hell, you've heard me on guitar, you know I'm no Eric Clapton. I just didn't know you played anything except mp3s."

At that Rodney stiffened, shoulders jerked back. "Yes, well," he said tightly. "Music and math, they're closely connected. Many mathematicians have a degree of musical aptitude, and vice versa for musicians. Which, to be honest, didn't occur to me at the time, but it seems like certain functions were clearer to me a few weeks ago—"

It wasn't what Rodney was saying that registered, so much as how he stopped saying it, clamping his mouth closed just a moment too late. "A few weeks," John said, and got it. "The Sedes—"

"Piano lessons." Rodney sounded almost desperate. "That was it. When I was a kid, I learned piano. You know, like how many other kids. But the Challidans didn't have any Earth music—it was all new to them. Frankly, since they don't have pianos, I'm not sure what good it'll do them. From what that Dux woman was saying, they might be interested in our musical notation. Or hell, maybe they can build pianos, I don't know. Either way, they wanted it. And I haven't really played much for years—I mean, I still can, I practice—I used to practice in the rec room occasionally. But it wasn't anything I needed."

"You gave the Challidans beginner piano lessons."

"Well, all my lessons. But. Yeah."

John raised his eyebrows. "Huh. Not bad—they liked it, and we didn't lose anything; it's not like there aren't plenty of real musicians around here." There were three Atlantis cover bands, that he knew of, plus a jazz ensemble and a string quartet. "That was pretty smart, actually."

"I _am_ a genius," Rodney reminded, but quieter than he should.

John felt his satisfaction slip. "Teyla's lessons?"

Rodney sighed, fingers twitching where they were curled around the wooden flute. "Music and math, they're interrelated, as I was saying. I didn't think the music had any relevance to what I do now, but..."

"Damn it, you said—" _swore_ —"that you and your science weren't affected!"

"I said my job performance wasn't compromised," Rodney said. "It's not. But I've been going over some of the ideas I came up with when I was genetically advanced, and I'm maybe, slightly, struggling with a few concepts I was managing to grasp before—not that this math isn't fantastically complex anyway, Zelenka thinks I'm delusional to believe I'm understanding any of it. But my music background might've given me an edge I hadn't considered before."

"And you're trying to get that edge back."

"Exactly. Whatever the Challidans said, it's got to be possible to relearn the very basics. Besides, Athosian music is different enough from Western European traditions that it's a whole new skill set anyway." Rodney tilted up his chin in challenge, daring John to respond.

"Great," John said. "Good luck."

"That's it?"

"What do you want me to say? Want to jam sometime?" John thought about it. "Actually that could be pretty awesome. Me on guitar, you on the flute, Teyla could sing, I bet Ronon would love drums."

"Now you are kidding."

"We could call ourselves Off-worlders. Or The Away Team."

"Sheppard—"

"Mission Rock Your Galaxy?"

"Not a chance. The Pegasus Four?"

"Lieutenant Spiegel's R&B group's already taken that. Atlantis Morissette?"

"Goodnight, Sheppard!"

 

* * *

That should have been that. John should have counted them lucky, yet again, another close call—should have moved past it, buried it, forgotten it.

He couldn't. Rodney kept up his lessons with Teyla, as regularly as John practiced stick-fighting with her, late at night or early in the morning when nobody was around, and he wouldn't play a note if he knew John were there. When John asked Teyla about it, she'd only tell him that Rodney's progress was quite satisfactory. No jamming sessions anytime soon, though.

And Rodney was still bad-tempered in the labs, worse than usual by the way Zelenka kept reproaching him for making scientists cry before breakfast. Ignoring the success of the puddlejumper power reduction experiments, he was still tearing out his hair over the crazy mathematics from his near-Ascension. And maybe that was just Rodney being Rodney, because as high a bar as he set for the people under him, it was always a mile higher for himself.

But maybe it was something else, something missing.

It wasn't like John thought he could get it back. Some things you couldn't; he'd known that before he ever came to Pegasus. Carson only shook his head when asked—"John, I've got no idea how the Sedes did what it did, much less any clue of how to reverse it. If the Challidans invented the technology—which is likely, given how little it resembles any Ancient equipment we know of—then they'd understand it better than us, and if they thought it impossible..."

Finally he went to Elizabeth. She said, "I can't authorize this mission, John," with her hands folded neatly on her desk—to give the illusion of calm control, he knew; if her fingers weren't laced together she'd be playing with a pen. "Not without a specific goal."

"Then don't make it a mission," John said. "I've got some leave, I'll go myself, don't even have to let my team know. Just give me permission to take a jumper through the gate. For one afternoon, I'll be back in time for dinner."

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, sighed. "If you get in trouble on an unauthorized—"

"I won't."

"No weapons," Elizabeth told him. "Since you'll be off-duty. You'll have the jumper, but one stunner only—it's not an overtly hostile world, even by your own report."

"Sure," John agreed, and Elizabeth arched an eyebrow and conceded.

Challidas was even grayer than John remembered, a thin hoarfrost coating the trees around the clearing, and the winter wind nipped his cheeks like needles. Dux Yerrith came out to meet him again, a Mountain Dew yellow cloak over her crimson jacket. Her brace of servants wore the same orange and indigo, though more layers of it, and with caps covering their bald heads.

"I'm pleased to see you, Vas Colonel," she said, civilly enough. "Have you been authorized to discuss future trading?"

She wished, he bet. The Challidan imitation darts still dipped and wobbled in the cloudy sky. "No," John said, and Yerrith's smile drooped, but she brought him down into the tunnels anyway.

She didn't know all the words Carson had used, but she told him, "We can share the expertise of the Sedes with your Vas Beckett, if he'd care to come and receive that skill. But his understanding now is correct—a skill extracted cannot ever again be received. And similar skills often will not take correctly. But there are many other skills Vas McKay could have, our archive is open to him."

As if John would let Rodney sit in the Sedes again. But he kept his polite smile fixed on his face, even when Yerrith went on to say, "Four of my Vasis have already received Vas McKay's skill—his music is unlike anything in our archives, and there's been much joy in adopting it to our own instruments and songs. If you would listen, to tell him our great appreciation of his gift—"

"No," John said, biting off the word before he could choke on it, not saying that he'd steal that gift if he could, that crystal that had stolen Rodney's music lessons; would smash it to dust before anyone else could take what wasn't theirs.

But it was already too late for that, wasn't it; four other people with his skill, four people they could just extract it from again if they wanted, steal it again. And no way to return it, not to where it belonged.

There was nothing he could do; he should leave. Accept the losses and move on.

But that had never been one of John's own talents. Instead he found himself telling Yerrith, "You owe us three more skills. Give me McKay's."

The Sedes Facultatium was as unforgivably hard and colder than before, the winter chill of the iron leaching body heat through his BDUs. The crystal Yerrith's servants placed in the claw over his head was red like a ruby, light catching off its perfect facets.

John clenched his fists, closed his eyes. There was a tingle down his spine, and his thoughts lurched, scattered and instantly regrouped, like he'd nodded off in a mission briefing and jerked out of the half-formed dreams a second later.

"It's done," Yerrith said, and smiled. "And it is well done, Vas Colonel. I was waiting for you to return—it didn't sit right with me, that your people would've lost this skill."

"Yeah," John said. If she were expecting approval or appreciation, she'd have a hell of a lot longer to wait.

 

* * *

Atlantis's recreation room, off the commissary, had a digital piano. Not a simple electronic keyboard, but a pricey Yamaha instrument, full-sized, all eighty-eight keys realistically weighted and pressure-sensitive. It didn't quite feel like a genuine grand piano, but hooked into the room's modded Ancient/Hi-Fi audio system, it sounded like the frontispiece of a world-class concert hall.

John waited until four mornings after the last of the pounding hangover had faded, before he sat down at it.

Like how many other kids, John had actually endured a year of private piano lessons himself, when he was nine; and another year of saxophone at age thirteen. He had since become decent with guitar tabs and could stumble through the treble clef, but he had to count down notes to figure out the bass clef. The only time he'd touched the rec room piano before was to teach Ronon how to peck out the accompaniment to "Heart & Soul" (and that only to drive the jazz ensemble into hysterics).

There was nobody in the rec room now; it was too early, the dawn sunlight soft and pink through the wide windows. A pile of sheet music was stacked haphazardly on the floor by the piano. John grabbed one booklet at random: Mozart's Sonata No.11, sounded sufficiently classical.

He turned the piano's volume down low, to not much more than a murmur, looked at the keys—ebony and ivory, Middle C right in the center. No problem. The music he set on the rest, opened to the first page.

For a moment it was just lines and dots, schools of tiny black tadpoles wriggling over the staffs. But this was High C, that was a quarter note; A major, six-eight time. He studied the keyboard, picked out the first notes—the opening chord, and he held it down, the muted notes sounding faintly and dying away.

Then he played the next chord—a sixteenth note, quick skip to the next, and then the next—

John had never played this piece, wasn't sure if he'd heard it before. But he _knew_ it—his fingers on the keys knew it, confidently finding every note he read off the page. Knew not to rush it—" _andante grazioso_ " at the top of the score, but he didn't know what that meant, except for a vague recollection from his own lessons that "andante" meant slow.

He'd never had Mozart in those kids lessons, had no memory of ever learning a piece like this. But he knew how to play it, liquid and light, trills rolling under his fingers.

Watching his hands was like watching the gauges the first time he had hovered in a helicopter, buffeted by real winds instead of the programmed constants of a simulator; his self-conscious, deliberate effort was too slow to compensate for what instinct readily managed. He fumbled, melody crashing into noise, and took his hands off the keyboard. His heart was pounding in his ears, out of tempo with the music.

When the last discordant echoes faded, John raised the piano's volume, opened the booklet to a random page and tried again, not giving himself a chance to think, just playing. This part he had heard before, wherever. He played it too fast, racing against his own pulse, diving through the escalating runs and loops and hammering the chords until he ran out of score. The angle of his hands, the spread of his fingers, felt—right, like habit, like he'd done this for years. As certain and natural and obvious as the jumper's controls had been, the first time he'd sat at them.

The position of the final chord was still familiar when he shifted down a couple keys, white to black. He let his fingers dance from those new, known notes to the next, gliding with easy conviction, even when he closed his eyes—it was almost easier with his eyes closed; he could better listen to this music he'd never heard, for all his hands knew it.

Until one chord struck a chord—and this he recognized, the opening of "Ring of Fire" hiding in the languid waltz. John opened his eyes, felt for the next notes. The melody was right there, waiting for him to find it, and he plunged into it, the rhythm and harmony there like a headwind, lifting the song airborne. Nothing to it, and he grinned at the ostentatious irony of Johnny Cash on a grand piano.

He banged out the finale with more gusto than was warranted, lifted his hands and listened to the storm of notes subside. He'd heard that song a hundred times, had strummed the chords on his guitar, but feeling its flow through his own hands, he'd found twists and ripples and moments of dissonance and harmony that were beautiful in ways he'd never realized. As satisfying as climbing through storm clouds into clear blue twilight.

"Don't remember ever learning that one," Rodney said behind him, conversationally.

John almost fell off the piano stool, grin gone. Rodney's tone was cool, not accusing, but guilt clawed at him like his friend had shouted _thief_. "Rodney—"

"Oh, come on," Rodney said, "it's not like I didn't know."

John hadn't told the team when he'd left, or where he'd been once he got back from Challidas. His migraine the next day had probably given it away, but none of them had asked, not even Rodney, who never let courtesy or tact suppress his questions.

Rodney strode over now, flipped to the cover of the sheet music spread on the rest. "The 'Rondo Alla Turka,' of course, I should've expected that of you."

"I knew it," John said. He raised his hands, watched his fingers move like they weren't his own. Not his own hands; his hands had never been taught to play like this. "I mean, you knew it. Pretty well."

"It's hardly a demanding piece." Rodney sounded as disparaging as when dismissing a junior scientist's research.

"But it's fun," John said thoughtlessly, and then wanted to wince. He pushed his stool away from the piano, tucked his hands under his arms, hiding the stolen gift in their fingers. "Rodney, this..."

"I actually didn't lose as much as I thought I might," Rodney said, calmly, looking over John's shoulder at the piano with an unreadable expression. "I still remember composers, dates—I can still recognize pieces I used to play, I remember the sound of the music. Still have perfect pitch, too, that surprised me, actually. The music theory, though, modes, chords, progressions—I'm missing, not the words, mostly, the vocabulary's there. But the _meaning_ —I listen to pieces, and I can't identify the key, I can't make out the meter. The rhythm, the structure—it's all gone; everything's just pretty sounds."

John had never thought of music as anything else. "So, take it you had more than beginner lessons," he said.

Rodney sighed, pulled over a chair and sat. "I had my first piano lesson when I was five. And...took to it. My teachers said—well, you know I'm a genius. I was in junior national competitions by the time I was nine."

"Along with building nuclear bombs?"

"I still had hobbies. The piano playing, though, that's what I was going to do. I was going to go to Juilliard, be a world-famous pianist. Music, it made sense to me. It was just so perfect and rational and _right_ —I thought I understood it, I thought I couldn't get it wrong."

John glanced over at the piano, thinking of the fit of his fingers to the keys, the fulfillment of hearing each proper note ring out. "Yeah," he said, and then, "So what happened?" He looked at Rodney's hands—blunt fingers, but adroit when it came to fixing broken tech or typing; easy to imagine those fingers gliding over a piano's keyboard as swift and sure as they did over a computer's. "Why'd you stop—did you get injured or something?"

Rodney shook his head. "What do you think I was, a sports star? I was careful about that. No. I just couldn't cut it."

"You couldn't—"

"When I was twelve I got a new teacher—my parents scraped together the cash to send me to lessons in Toronto, with a famous pianist, a renowned instructor. He only accepted a few students a year, and most of them became concert professionals. I only had three lessons with him. He told my parents it wasn't worth the money. That I'd never make it, I had the ability, but I didn't have the gift. 'A fine clinical player,' he said, 'but no sense of the art whatsoever.' He told me I should become a mathematician instead, because numbers, at least, I understood."

"So the guy was nuts. Senile?"

"Oh, come on." Rodney's hands rotated in annoyed circles. "He was right, obviously. I'm far more valuable as a physicist than I ever would've been as a musician. I'm pretty damn brilliant with numbers and no good whatsoever at art. Art's about intuition and leaps of faith and people. There's no absolute answers to find, and I've never been any good at understanding people. He did me a favor, kept me from wasting more time. Actually, all things considered, he did the planet a favor. The galaxy, even, imagine where we'd be if I hadn't become a scientist?"

"Yeah, maybe," John said. "But he was still wrong."

"Huh?"

"The guy who told you that. He was totally, completely dead wrong."

Rodney stared at him, as John waved his own hands about furiously—maybe all skilled pianists gestured? Or maybe he'd just hung around Rodney too much—"I could've told you that, before I ever knew you played the piano. Like hell you're no good at art—what are you doing every other day on Atlantis? The miracles you pull off—science, art, it's _magic_ , according to half your scientists. And not understanding people, that's bullshit. Sure, you don't get along with everyone, but if you didn't understand people..."

 _If you didn't understand your friends, then I'd be sitting in the co-pilot seat of the jumper right now, watching you fly the way I never would again_ , but John couldn't say it; it got stuck in his throat. All he could think of was the effortless dance of his own hands over the piano keys, and Rodney clumsily imitating Teyla's fingering on the Athosian flutes.

Trying to get back a sliver of what he had had before, enough to bring his math and numbers back into focus; but Rodney would never sit at this piano again and feel the music pouring out through his fingers, would never take an old, familiar song into his hands and make it soar.

He got it now, why Rodney hadn't wanted to tell him what he'd offered. Too difficult to explain it; until he'd had this gift himself, John couldn't have been able to imagine what it would mean to give it up.

Except that Rodney had never flown a plane, not like John could, and yet he'd understood all the same. Rodney thought he was bad with people, but John was worse—should have asked the Challidans if they had any people skills on hand. What could he say to Rodney, now that he understood; what apology could possibly mean anything?

Rodney, never patient with silence, didn't give him the chance. He grumbled and ducked out of the chair. "Come here," he said, and gestured imperatively to John with a jerk of his chin while he flipped through the pile of music. Pulling out a score, he set it on the stand over the Mozart sonata. "You can fool around, but let's see if you can actually play."

John scooted the stool back over, read the cover. "The _Goldberg Variations_?"

"I know you've heard these before," Rodney said. "I put Glenn Gould's performances on in the lab sometimes."

"And you used to play them."

"Tried to play them. This is Bach, not Mozart, it demands precision and perfection and insight over flair." He turned the page over to the opening aria, squinted at the notes, then shook his head. "Well, whatever, should be the right music."

"You can't read it?"

Rodney pointed to the staff. "F, B, D. Quarter note, dotted eighth. I reviewed the basics. But it's the difference between knowing the alphabet and being able to sound out words. Functional illiteracy." He shrugged. "Athosian music uses entirely different notation anyway. What are you waiting for? Go on, play."

John spread his hands over the keyboard, found the opening notes but didn't depress the keys, his fingertips resting lightly on the solid plastic. "This was one of your favorite pieces."

"Still is."

"It's not mine," John said desperately. "Even if I know how to play it now—even if I get it, even if it makes sense to me, the math of it, or the theory—it's still not mine."

"I know," Rodney said, more impatient than upset. "And I can't hear everything I used to hear in it, now. But that's why."

Rodney sat down again, pulled the chair up to the piano beside John's stool, but kept his hands in close orbit in his lap, far from the keys. "I never played for anybody else," he said. "Not since I was twelve. Since this piano showed up on Atlantis, I started practicing again a little, but only when no one was around, and I always used headphones so nobody could overhear. I'm not a musician, not an artist; it was just for me, just exercise. A different kind of math, to give my brain a break sometimes.

"Except, when I was in the Sedes—on that hallucinogen, I thought I was playing, thought I was sitting at a real grand piano. And that Dux woman was watching somehow, I don't know how the technology works, but that's how they made sure of what skill they were getting. She could see and hear the music—and she thought it was good. Wonderful. She was going to get all your crazy piloting ability, and then she got my piano playing instead, and she thought it was worth it."

Rodney wasn't looking at John but at the page of music, not angrily, not sad—curious, the look most suited to his face, the most basic of all his gifts, that raw need to know. "So...I want to hear it. What I traded. What she heard."

There was nothing John could say, no words to justify the inequality of that trade.

Instead he nodded, glanced at the score, and brought his fingers down on the keys. The first paired notes rang out brightly, and he skipped to the next, and those following, picking out the aria in clean, trilling harmonies. He closed his eyes and quieted his mind, and let the music that wasn't his and maybe never would be flow from his fingers into the air, and every note he played said, _thank you_.


End file.
